I think you're missing the point. He was talking about this section of the article: >That way, of course, they can say things in their ads like "[drug name] ha

I think you're missing the point. He was talking about this section of the article: >That way, of course, they can say things in their ads like "[drug name] has a low occurrence of side effects, such as dry mouth, which occurred about as often as they did with placebo." cooldeal point is that you need to mimic the side effects to make the control group believable. Whether it is needed to use inert components or not would depend on the nature of the drug in test.